Page 28 of What Doesn't Kill Her

“Rae!” Kellen sat unmoving, staring at her daughter.

Her daughter, who wore a pink leotard, a pink glittery tutu, a gold plastic necklace with matching bracelets and black rain boots with big-eyed pink owls on them. She held her big brown stuffed dog, Patrick, in one arm. On one side of her head, she wore her hair in a French braid. On the other, her flyaway blond shoulder-length hair looked as if it had been combed by a chicken. She was pale. She looked scared. But by God, she didn’t stop smiling.

“Mommy?” Rae’s brown eyes were fixed on the gun pointed in her face.

Kellen lowered the pistol, set the safety and slid it with shaking hands into her holster. “Sweetheart...you shouldn’t have... You don’t understand what you...” Kellen sucked in a breath, tried to focus. “Bond?”

“I heard Daddy. He said you hadn’t bonded with me and I’ve been making our comic book ThunderFlash and LightningBug, and when they go on an adventure together, we bond.” Rae started bouncing up and down and grinning.

Kellen felt physically ill. Light-headed. She wanted to faint, to froth, to cry. She said the first thing that came to her mind. “Your father’s going to kill me.”

“No, it’s okay,” Rae said smugly. “I wrote him a note.”

Wrote him a note.Kellen mouthed the words, and with that, sense returned. And fear. Even more fear than before. She glanced behind them.

She’d left Horst on the road, but clearly he was working with someone. That someone wanted the mummy’s head, or at least wanted the money they would get for it. There might be, was probably, a tracking device on the van or in the head’s travel bag or both. She already knew these guys would kill to obtain the head. She needed to get going, get away, save the head...save Rae.

“Get up here on the seat, sit down, strap in.” Kellen fumbled for her phone. “We have to go.”

“Okay, Mommy, let me get my blankie.” Rae knelt beside the back seat and dragged out her Ocean Princesses backpack.

Now Kellen remembered that flash of pink. If only she’d followed up, she would have found Rae, called Max, and she and Rae would be on their way home now. Horst could have stolen the head without trying to kill her, and he’d be dead because whoever wanted that head wouldn’t share the profits. But Kellen wouldn’t be involved, and her child would be safe. “We don’t have time for your blankie.” She ran her hands over herself, searching.Where is my phone?

The look Rae shot at her was nothing less than incredulous. “I have to have my blankie!”

From somewhere, Kellen heard those very words echoing down the years. Who, time and again, had said that?

Oh, no. That was her voice. “Right. I’m going to start driving.” She put the van in First and eased forward. She felt in her lower pants pockets, then her shirt pockets, then back into the pants pocket where her phone should be. That pocket was unbuttoned.

She hadn’t unbuttoned it. How had it come to be—?

She caught her breath and stared up the slope of the road.

Horst. His claim to be a Disney World pickpocket. All that bragging she had put down to nothing but words from that big silly man-boy—and he’d lifted her phone slick as a whistle.

When had he done it?

When she was loading the head into the van. When she was removing her jacket. When she was distracted by that glimpse of pink.

“Mommy, I have to be in the seat belt!” Rae’s indignation practically fogged the van. “If I’m not in the seat belt and you stopped suddenly, I could be hurt or even killed.”

Kellen kept driving up the narrow road, picking up speed, keeping one eye on the rearview mirror. “Did your grandma tell you that?”

“Yes, and my daddy.”

“They’re right. Did they tell you you’re a big girl and you can strap yourself in?”

“No...”

“Give it a try.”

In a slow and disorganized operation, Rae dragged Patrick, her ragged stained yellow yarn blankie and a bunch of ragged pieces of paper stapled together between the front seats, then looked at the passenger side. “Where’s my car seat?”

Kellen squeezed the steering wheel and for the first time, realized she was on the fine edge of hysteria. She wanted to shout,How should I know where your car seat is?She wanted to grab Rae by the shoulders, to shake her and insist she admit she’d done a terrible, dangerous, reckless thing. She wanted to explain that they would probably both die.

No matter what Kellen did or said, or what Rae agreed to, they would probably die.

Oh, God.Kellen was a terrible mother. She wanted to rattle her own child, and they were going to die. She had to try, but if she couldn’t save them...

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